Anyone have any advice? Currently I'm listed in three RBLs. The RBLs I'm listed have an aggressive catch all policy, that is they block entire subnets if a couple of spammers reside in them, or the ISP who owns the subnets have a bad policy concerning spammers. If your an innocent who's IP(s) falls within one of these subnets you're screwed. The usual response seems to be "not our problem, we only maintain the lists, ISPs are the ones who block you," well it is your f**** problem. For one thing, as far as I'm concerned it's libel, by blacklisting my IP you are officially labelling me a spammer, and if I had the money I would sue the sh** out of you. Fighting spam is a good thing, destroying innocent business in the process is not. /End rant.
I had to contact some of ISP's, such as rr.com, to take my set of IPs off their list (same problem - a small set of addresses within a larger subnet). Most of them listened and removed by IP range from their firewalls. I had to deal with a couple of companies, though, who refused to do this. In most cases people don't use RBL in real time - it's too expensive performance-wise. Monitor your SMTP logs and see if you actually do have a problem. If you do, you can contact the folks that block you and explain the situation (point to your website, describe what you do, etc). J.D.
Thanks JD, I think that's what I'll do (contact the individual ISPs), pleading to the RBL maintainers seems to get no sympathy even to the point where they take out their aggression towards spammers on me. I know the problem does affect me, due to the amount of bounced emails I get on the subject. And, that doesn't even account for the hosts that just reject the email as opposed to bouncing it.
Make sure your SMTP server is secure, though - some ISPs test your SMTP server automatically whether it's an open relay or not. If you fail, they will black-list you instantly. Try this tool to test your SMTP server: http://www.abuse.net/relay.html J.D.